Louis Valtat, Nøgen kvinde, 1904, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of the Smooke Family, Los Angeles, to American Friends of the Israel Museum,
in memory of Nathan and Marion Smooke, Photo © The Israel Museum jerusalem by Avshalom Avital.

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Monet, Renoir,
Van Gogh, Gauguin
Impressionists
and Post-Impressionists
from The Israel Museum,
Jerusalem
31 January-7 June 2009

They caused an outrage when they appeared. Today they rank among the most reproduced, popular and priceless artists in the world. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Rodin, van Gogh, Cézanne, Braque … This collection of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem includes 53 paintings and sculptures.

It is a unique opportunity to experience a number of masterpieces by the many brilliant and innovative artists based in France who would revolutionise world art from the 1870s and into the 20th century. A time when change was the only constant.

The artists caused an outrage when they appeared. Today they rank among the most reproduced, popular and priceless artists.

In their art the Impressionists communicated their sensory perception of the new modern world that was developing before their eyes. They created a new style of painting, immediate and sketch-like in order to capture the fleeting moment before it was over. They painted the reality around them. The heroes and gods of past generations’ art must surrender their place to contemporary people of flesh and blood; elegant Parisiennes, rural girls, posh gentlemen and harvesters. Eager students of sunlight, the Impressionists painted outdoors. They daubed their canvasses spontaneously and with brushes heavy with paint. They painted with colours rather than lines. Their works pulse with presence and a particular sensual pleasure.

Light and colour. When today we regard Claude Monet’s depictions of the water lily pond in his garden in Giverny, it seems incredible that these pictures caused an outrage when they were painted. But where we see beautiful, sensuous paintings, Monet’s contemporaries saw awkward, unfinished works.
Up close one does not recognise the subject. It is necessary to step back and optically “create” the picture oneself. Monet was
obsessed by this subject in the later years of his life. Contours and lines are dissolved in the mirror image of the water. Only light and colours create the picture. In that sense the water’s surface functions just as the Impressionists’ canvasses.
The fleeting impression is rendered quickly in an eternally changing picture.

Tribute. Corn Fields and Poppies (Green Ears of Wheat) is a tribute to the colours, to nature and to the life force. The ears are seen from below in a dramatic worm’s eye view. Their soaring growth is imbued with an almost religious significance as if they were reaching for their maker. Existential issues and man’s inner mental life occupied Vincent van Gogh. He painted before the subject, in intense close contact, while at the same time twisting the shapes around. This picture was painted in June 1888 in the southern French city of Arles where van Gogh lived for a couple of years.

A moment. Boulevard Montmartre: Spring is one of 14 paintings that Pissarro painted of the view from the hotel room he rented for that purpose for some months in 1897. Pissarro was a master at capturing seasons, times of day and moments which this picture amply demonstrates. The quick brushstrokes create life and movement in the picture while the tight composition produces structure and balance. Spontaneous and meticulously planned. In 1935 the Nazis forced a Polish Jewish collector, Max Silberberg, to sell the painting. After the war it has had several owners until John and Frances L. Loeb donated it to the Israel Museum. Not until 1999 did a lawful heir appear, Gerta Silberberg, who decided to let the work remain on loan indefinitely at the Israel Museum.

Untouched. Paul Gauguin travelled to Tahiti to escape civilisation and find the untouched paradise. His dream did not quite come true; he died ill and lonely the same year that this picture was painted. Landscape with Dog shows the view from Gauguin’s house on Hiva Oa, one of the Marquesas islands near Tahiti. The colours of the foreground in particular are unnatural and symbolic. A mysterious, unreal fight is taking place in the artist’s imagination between the dog and the chicken which puffs itself up. The confrontation reflects Gauguin’s own feeling of struggle against the Catholic church, the art critics and the social norms.

The Post-Impressionists denotes the group of contemporary or younger artists who painted in a different style from the Impressionists. Some of them, instead, retired from modern life. They depicted the inner world instead of the outer one — and an artist like Gauguin travelled to Tahiti to find and pursue the original, primitive life.

Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin presents the incredible span in the artists’ reactions to the new age. We are shown a volatile, versatile period when the artist milieu was seething with innovations, discussions, inspiration, friendships and discord.

This insight is given us not merely through the paintings but also via some rare film clips that are shown in the exhibition. They are taken from Sacha Guitry’s 1915 film Ceux de chez nous (Those of Our Land). His project was to immortalise the most important personages in his own time — before it was too late! — in the relatively young medium of film.

Here we see Monet painting and chain-smoking at his lily pond. An arthritic Renoir in a wheelchair painting while his son, Jean Renoir, is helping him mix the paints. Finally we are given a glimpse of a reluctant Degas promenading down a boulevard. Degas did not wish to receive Sacha Guitry.

The film is unique both because of its content and as film history. As far as we know, it has never before been shown in Denmark.

The exhibition is organised by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, in collaboration with Arken Museum of Modern Art.

Artists in the exhibition include: Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, Sisley, Hassam, Rodin and Bourdelle, as well as Signac, Rysselberghe, Cross, Cézanne, Mailllol, Gauguin, Bernard, Valtat, Sérusier, Bonnard, Vuillard, Friesz, Braque and van Gogh.

Georges Braque, Trees at la Ciotat, 1907, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Beguest of Charlotte Bergman to American Friends of the Israel Museum, Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, Spring, 1897, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Formerly a bequest of John and Frances L. Loeb, New York, to American Friends of the Israel Museum. Now extended loan from the daughter-in-law of Max Silberberg, Breslau Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Paul Gauguin, Landscape with Dog,1903, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Bequest of Robert and Marguerite Kahn-Sriber, Paris, in memory of Amnon Ben Natan who fell in the Yom Kippur War, Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Avshalom Avital.

Vincent van Gogh, Corn Fields and Poppies (Green Ears of Wheat), 1888, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of Yad Hanadiv, Jerusalem, from the collection of Miriam Alexandrine de Rothschild, daughter of the first Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Claude Monet, Pond with Water Lilies, 1907, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of the Sam Spiegel Estate, Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Paul Gauguin, Upa Upa (Ilddansen), 1891, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of Yad Hanadiv, Jerusalem, from the collection of Miriam Alexandrine de Rothschild, daughter of the late Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Photo © The Israel Museum Jerusalem by Avshalom Avital.